Ovid’s Bacchae: a poetic metamorphosis Fiachra Mac Góráin

entheus, king of Thebes, dominates the last third of book 3 The pirates in turn disparage Acoetes’ of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, coming to a bloody end for resist- advice to respect the mysterious boy, and P eventually overcome him. Acoetes is ing the new god Bacchus, often called Liber in Roman poetry. freed of any responsibility for holding the Divine justice brutally punishes mortal hybris or arrogance in god to ransom. During this story there is a subtle hint this macabre replay of Euripides’ Bacchae. that Acoetes could be Dionysus in Fear of the foreign: fear of the new Euripides’ Pentheus, and his provocative disguise. ‘There is no god more present taunt that the rites have been fabricated than he is,’ says Acoetes to Pentheus, as he Reminiscent of some modern politicians, (558 commentaque sacra) echoes a very reports the god’s epiphany: the ship stalls Pentheus is characterized by xenophobia similar phrase in the Bacchae (218). But in the water and becomes overgrown with and suspicion of foreign religions. His he also echoes motifs from the mouths of vines and ivy; the god himself appears to zealous opposition to Bacchus as an characters in Virgil’s Aeneid, mostly brandish a thyrsus and marshals phantom outsider conceals the fact that he was Italians opposed to the arrival of Aeneas lynxes, tigers and panthers. The pirates are himself of recent immigrant stock: his and the Trojans, such as Turnus, Numanus terrified and jump overboard. They are grandfather Cadmus had settled in Thebes Remulus, and Mezentius. With irreverent punished for their impiety by being turned having fled from Tyre in Phoenicia. While humour, Ovid pokes fun at how Virgil’s into sea creatures, and Ovid describes how the Romans were in fact quite receptive to characters had formulated their sense of they grow scales, fins, or a tail. Once meta- new gods as long as their rites were care- national identity by deriding the foreign morphosed, they gambol about like a fully regulated in accordance with ances- ways which they wished to avoid. In the chorus (685), perhaps in allusion to tragic tral custom, Pentheus’ hostility to Bacchus end, Pentheus will be drawn into spying choruses that dance in honour of picks up on a typically Roman prejudice on the Bacchic rites, more interested in Dionysus. The god’s reward is that about the dangers of Greek and Eastern them than he would have cared to admit. Acoetes is the only one of the crew of influence. Bacchus’ is a complex case: on The centrepiece of Euripides’ Bacchae twenty or so to retain his human form. the one hand the Roman Senate had is a series of manipulative conversations clamped down severely on the worship of between Pentheus and the disguised Blindness and vision the Bacchanalia in 186 B.C., and sure Dionysus. These result in Dionysus enough some of the arguments against the persuading Pentheus to accompany him to Pentheus is wilfully blind to the moral cult reported by Livy are used by Mount Cithaeron to spy on the maenads. lessons of Acoetes’ story. He angrily Pentheus; on the other hand, Bacchus’ Ovid has replaced these exchanges with imprisons his captive and orders his death mother was Semele, a Theban princess an embedded eyewitness account deli- by torture. Equally he fails to heed the and Pentheus’ aunt, and so Pentheus actu- vered by an internal narrator, Acoetes’ evidence of the prison doors sponta- ally rejects one of his own in opposing the story of how the Etruscan mariners took neously opening, and the chains magically ritual reintegration of his own cousin. Bacchus captive, a story that is familiar falling from Acoetes’ arms. Pentheus’ Pentheus’ speech against Bacchus is from the seventh Homeric hymn to blindness is part of a wider theme of blind- similarly structured around a contrast Dionysus. Ovid then concludes the book ness and insight, vision and spectatorship, between the depraved easterner and the by returning to the plot of Euripides’ which runs throughout book 3 of the hardy native Thebans. Those stalwart Bacchae, giving his Pentheus episode an Metamorphoses. The visual theme, also veterans who overcame the perils of war A–B–A structure. It is typical of Ovid’s prominent in Euripides’ Bacchae, is made are now distracted by the brassy melodies allusive artistry to weave together two explicit in a theatrical simile near the start and seductive finery of Dionysian cult, poetic sources in a way that suggests of the book, but it encompasses also their heads covered in garlands rather than connections between them. Narcissus’ fascination with his own reflec- by helmets, and – worst of all – overcome tion. Earlier in the book it is established by a timid young man in purple and gold Acoetes’ tale and the sea-god Dionysus that even though Tiresias is blind, he whose hair is dripping with perfume. The enjoys the gift of prophecy and inner king’s rant tips over into a parody of local Acoetes tells an amusingly self-exculpat- vision. Nonetheless, Pentheus mocks him pride as he expresses a cartoon version of ing tale. His voice is one of the many in for his blindness, and Tiresias replies: the Theban foundation legend: the Metamorphoses to emphasize divine ‘How happy you would be if you too were ‘Remember, I beg you, that you are sprung power and the importance of respecting devoid of this light of vision; that way you from the serpent, and recapture something the gods. While his main aim is to explain would not see the Bacchic rites.’ of his spirit to defend your reputation!’ how he became a devotee of Bacchus, he Appropriately enough, then, the builds up a strong moral contrast between punishment of Pentheus is visually Reinventing Pentheus’ story his own pious recognition of the spark of charged. Every story in the divinity in the boy Dionysus and the evil Metamorphoses concludes in a transfor- Ovid’s Pentheus is based substantially on of his shipmates with their criminal pasts. mation of some kind. While in Acoetes’

27 tale, the transformation of men into sea- the Department of Greek and Latin, creatures was physically visible and University College London. In his spare described in detail, the transformation in time he enjoys theatre and other the Pentheus story is brought about in Dionysian pursuits. perceptual terms, a clever twist on the more common physical metamorphosis. Bacchus is the god of illusions, and Bacchic madness makes Agave see her son Pentheus as a beast of prey, and so she and her sisters hunt him down and rip him apart in a perverted ritual of Dionysian sparagmos, a live dismemberment in honour of the god. The killing of Pentheus takes place in a clearing which is visible from all sides (709 spectabilis undique campus). His mother is the first to see him spying on the rites with profane eyes, but instead of recognizing him as her son, she sees a wild boar, and calls upon her sisters to join her in hunting him down. The stage is set for an extraordinary spectacle.

Ripping off Euripides

Tiresias had prophesied to Pentheus that unless he paid due homage to Dionysus, he would be torn apart and would bespat- ter the woods, his mother, and his aunts with blood. The word for ‘you will be torn apart’ is spargere, which evokes the Greek sparagmos. Undoubtedly, the killing of Pentheus is the emotional climax of Euripides’ Bacchae, and it seems that, as so often in tragedy, the divine justice has been disproportionate to the human error being punished. Accordingly the reader might experience on Pentheus’ behalf the pity and fear, which Aristotle identifies in the Poetics as classic responses to tragedy. By contrast, Ovid treats the sparagmos with levity that borders on the glib. Pentheus’ aunt Autonoë rips off his right arm; his other aunt Ino rips off the left; Pentheus would have held out his hands to supplicate his mother, but he didn’t have any! When he shows her his bloody trunk instead, Agave howls and rips off his head. Ovid’s darkly comic dilution of the tragic tone may be a response to the gravity of scenes involving Dionysian madness in Virgil’s Aeneid, a very different and more tragic kind of epic. Ovid’s Pentheus story gives us a very good sense of the place which Dionysus– Bacchus held in the ancient Roman imag- ination, cutting across the spheres of poetry and myth, religion, and politics. Wall painting from Pompeii and other visual arts attest to the Italians’ fascination with the god of tragedy and wine, who was dangerous and alluring in equal measure. If the story of Pentheus is a cautionary tale of misguided autocracy, Ovid suggests that while humans may try to resist Dionysus, the god will always triumph in the end.

Fiachra Mac Góráin teaches Classics at

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